well the timing of the pictures may have been convinient, but I seem to remember that the first picures of torture appeared last year in november, squaddies hanging prisoners from a fork lift truck IIRC. I am not saying out lads have done anything as bad as the americans but there have certainly been some incidents and really when we go to war on the basis that we did there really shouldnt be any incidents, there shouldnt be any prisoners dieing in custody.
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Please stop grouping these terms together. Its simply unfair to label people who are anti-war as unpatriotic, anti-American etc..Originally Posted by Vaul
I think you'll find that the vast majority of people who are antiwar in respect to Iraq are supportive of the troops and dont rub their hands with glee every time a new prisoner abuse photo comes out.
Anyone who has followed this unblinkered will realise that this war was sold on the dodgiest of agendas from a few special interests in America.
99% of people with this viewpoint do not criticise troops just for the sake of it and take no pleasure in the suffering of iraqis just to further a liberal agenda.
Knight 1: We are now no longer the Knights who say Ni.
Knight 2: NI.
Other Knights: Shh...
Knight 1: We are now the Knights who say..."Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-Ekki-PTANG. Zoom-Boing. Z'nourrwringmm.
Mr Morgan should be shipped out to Iraq with SA-80 in hand to walk the streets he has helped poison against us. I'd like to think he could stop a bullet aimed at someone who is just out there doing a job.
Mk1 or Mk2 SA80?
Seriously though, I have a lot of sympathy with that idea. Journalistic freedom's great, but it ought to be accompanied by some sense of responsibility - all too often, a story gets published without sufficient verification of its truthfulness, and someone somewhere suffers needlessly for it. Of course a retraction might get printed later, but it's a little late by then.
Mk1 or Mk2 SA80?
Seriously though, I have a lot of sympathy with that idea. Journalistic freedom's great, but it ought to be accompanied by some sense of responsibility - all too often, a story gets published without sufficient verification of its truthfulness, and someone somewhere suffers needlessly for it. Of course a retraction might get printed later, but it's a little late by then.
That is totally true. We saw the pictures used in demonstrations and stuck to smashed British gravestones in Bagdhad but we won't be seeing the retraction handed out in Iraq. Most of the people in Iraq who saw the pictures will never know they were faked because the terrorist leaders who passed out the original pictures in order to ferment ill feeling against us have no interest in hearing that it never happened.
what difference does it make? They already know and we already know that our troops have been abusing Iraqis, the photos may seem to offer some proof to the Iraqi's but its not like this stuff hasnt happened for real both in British controlled and US controlled areas. If this stuff in the pictures was pure fantasy and was not happening I would see your point and it would be a good one.
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Have you read the Amnesty International report ?
Here is the report on deaths of civilians.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp...04_amnesty.pdf
Most of the deaths were of armed people. Some were not, including one child. There are two versions of this story. One is from an unamed eye witness who said the Briton took careful aim at an 8 year old child and shot her. The other is that a warning shot was fired to calm a dangerous situation and later the child was brought to the them with a wound.
This is not a pattern of systematic organised killing, these are isolated incidents often occuring when our people are under attack themselves.
Contrast that report with this one of the same area 5 years ago
Victims of torture in Iraq are subjected to a wide range of forms of torture, including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings and electric shocks," said Amnesty International, based on interviews with hundreds of torture victims in Iraq over the years. "Some victims have died as a result and many have been left with permanent physical and psychological damage."
Other methods of torture include extinguishing of cigarettes on various parts of the body, extraction of finger nails and toenails and piercing of the hands with an electric drill. Some have been sexually abused and others have had objects, including broken bottles, forced into their anus. In addition to physical torture, detainees have been threatened with rape and subjected to mock executions.
A 25-year-old woman known as "Um Haydar" was beheaded in the street without charge or trial at the end of December 2000 after her husband, who was suspected by the authorities of involvement in Islamist armed activities, fled the country. Um Haydar was taken from her house in al-Karrada district, in front of her children and mother-in-law, by men belonging to Fedaiyye Saddam. Two men held her by the arms and a third pulled her head from behind and beheaded her in front of the residents. The beheading was also witnessed by members of the ruling Ba'ath Party in the area. The security men took the body and the head in a plastic bag and took away the children and mother-in-law. Their fate remains unknown.
Its not even in the same league as the treatment they are receiving from UK forces is it ?
And yes, actually it does matter that the pictures were faked. It matters because it is well established that even if you know someone did something you cannot fake the evidence. The police don't get away with faking evidence anymore and neither does the Mirror.
On a related note i didn't see much finger pointing or compassion for the Iraqis when they did this sort of thing to each other.
Last edited by Stolly; 04-06-2004 at 10:19 PM.
have you read the red cross report?
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...212154,00.html
The fact is our government said we were going there to help these people, does that include abusing them? Lets face it the vast majority of these detainees are not guilty of anything. (seems like I am treading old ground here, have you read the rest of the thread?)
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There is a huge glaring flaw in your position. The government may well have said that we are there to help them but it is not government policy to abuse them. There is not even the slightest hint in the amnesty report that any of the deaths are as a result of a deliberate policy of shooting to kill innocent civilians.
There are a huge amount of young people over there armed with automatic weapons, people are going to be shot. That doesn't mean it is government policy.
There is also a theme that you seem to think that even if these pictures were fake then its not really the point because they illustrate what you feel is happening. That is absolute rubbish. Fabricating the evidence does not magically make those events happen.
It is quite telling that you seem to be dissapointed that the pictures were faked. I think it would have suited you quite nicely if they were real.
How about a bit of perspective here? As I recall the previous regime thought it acceptable to test their nerve agents by dropping munitions on one of their own cities. That city just happened to have a population unpopular with the regime. Siezing people off the street for rape, real torture and murder was routine rather than isolated. Draining huge areas of marshland and creating a huge ecological disaster to wipe out a portion of the population that had differing views from the regime was also deemed acceptable to that regime. At last count the Ba'ath party was responsible for the deaths of over a million of their own people. How quickly people seem to forget the discovery of mass graves since the end of the war. Not to mention the thousands of Iranians who had been taken prisoner after the Iran-Iraq war who were murdered. Remember the discovery of those remains anyone?
Because we have a system of accountability individuals who transgress are brought to account. At which point certain groups start screaming that the US/UK forces and governments are as bad as the Ba'athists. Printing fake pictures and hoping they are real against the footage we all saw of distraught families identifying remains of relatives who had been murdered by fellow Iraqis.
Because small groups of fanatics whipped up by their religious leaders are rebelling. The whole country is said to be in flames. Where were these so called leaders before? Keeping a low profile because they would have 'disappeared' if they had opened their mouths. Now because there is tolerance. Out of their holes they crawl. I read in a paper about an Iraqi youth who said he was proud to be fightling to free Iraq. Pity he didn't have the balls to fight for it when it was being truly repressed. They even murder their own people who are trying to lead them to independance.
Free Iraq? Yeah right. Taliban II,.....just when you thought it was safe to back in the bazaar.
"You want loyalty? ......get a dog!"
I have tried my hardest not to join in this one, cos I tend to word things badly....but I can't stay out anymore....so I will try damned hard to word it correctly.
Blub2k..my dear dear chap. What an excellent viewpoint you have.
Ref Piers Morgana nd the Mirror...and in fact....most UK press:
The idea of him now having to walk the streets that his newspaper has tainted, and try to defend himself makes me laugh out loud....then think to myself "no thats unfair he was trying hard" and then rethink "no...he actually made a life threatening decision wrongly PURELY to sell more Newspapers than someone else"
My mind boggles with the implications of Piers Morgans job. Taking out Money, Salary and Job Respect (which we can't in the real world cos it effects his decision, but even if we DO) and look simply at Piers trying to inform the British Public about what was going on.....purely to assist the public knowing what wrongs were occuring....
he STILL got it wrong. It wasn't even a multi million pound deal that he lost....it was LIVES he endangered.
and still further wrong...it was the lives of the people who are employed to keep our country free....free from oppression and FREE TO PUBLISH THINGS that wouldn't be free to publish in Iraq.
And there is the perfection of the debate...the pure perfect roundness of it all.
Piers lives in a country that is free to question, to doubt, and even to ridicule its leaders. He makes his living from it !
And he reports on the way our soldiers and leaders try to control a situtation in another country where such freedoms are not possible.
And he does it in a way that casts doubt upon the country in which he lives. He casts doubt upon his own leaders and military. He clearly wants to show up the inadequacies of the government and military of the country that ALLOWS him to do it, allows him to ridicule his own country.
Its a dizzying dilema.
Stolly, I never said it was government policy to do this stuff (although it could well have been the policy of the US administration.) I would personaly lay blame directly with the military (who in my opinion shouldnt even be there), the officers who must have stood by and let it happen, It wasnt all random shootings and stuff, there was a case of a guy who's name I cant remember who was detainned and then returned to his father and family in a battered state, the guy had been beaten to death, in British custody. Quite frankly, that sounds like a war crime to me.
will try to find out that guys name and get youa link.
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http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/fisk10.html
Baha Mousa was the guys name, he had 2 kids.
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It's ABSOLUTELY wrong that someone should be abused or killed while in custody, I don't think anyone would deny that, but to be fair, the issue is being addressed:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3806349.stm
That's 4 immediately facing courts martial, with other investigations in progress, possibly leading to courts martial. Moreover, the prosecutions won't be handled by the army, but by the Army Prosecuting Authority, which doesn't report to the MoD, it reports to the Attorney General, i.e. it's about as independent a prosecuting authority as you can get. They are NOT going to rush into and then botch a prosecution (if they did, they'd be vilified to an unbelievable degree) so they will take their time about the decision to prosecute.
Now under the previous regime do you think soldiers abusing or possibly killing prisoners would have got a court martial or a commendation?
It IS wrong that detainees are abused or killed whilst in custody. The fact that we have an accountable system means that such transgressions are dealt with. Which is why these things come to light. From where I'm sitting it seems that as far as the bleeding hearts are concerned it's ok for Saddam's regime to commit genocide but as soon as a British soldier is even rumoured to have stepped out of line there are screams for instant retritbution amongst wailings of abuse of human rights and war crimes. Where the hell were these people when the above genocide was taking place? Nowhere. Deafening silence.
Just because there are prosecutions doesn't automatically mean that there is guilt. It means there is a case to answer. If these soldiers are found guilty then they will suffer the penalty of law. Quite frankly the fact that it isn't a court martial is a good thing. At least there will be a fair trial. Not a case of 'march the guilty b*stard in Sarn't Major'. The other good thing is that as it is under the auspices of such an independant body there is unlikely to be a whitewash either.
So Baha Mousa had 2 kids. So what? Those 6 MPs who were murdered by the Iraqis in Majar had kids too. Don't see many cries of condemnation for that act. What had they done wrong? Oh yes, they were training local police to be able to take over the role and help govern their own country.
Over 400 allied soldiers have been killed since the war ended. A large number of civilians working for the UN or working to return the infrastructure to the country. Let's not forget any Iraqi with enough balls to try and lead them into independance. Where in this thread is there a condemnation for these acts? Nope, but show a fake picture of squaddies beating up an Iraqi and those same people start screaming for heads.
(goes to politically incorrect corner with Zak)
"You want loyalty? ......get a dog!"
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